Engineers’ Move Spurs Rumors Google Will Sell Motorola Cable Assets

Google has confirmed it’s transferred a “small portion” of its field engineering team to Florida-based Telecommunication Support Services, giving further weight to speculation that it’s gearing up to sell its Motorola Mobility cable assets.

Those could be sold as early as September, industry insiders told Light Reading Cable, which also reports rumors that Barclays Capitalwill be the banker for the deal. Telecommunication Support Services handles engineering work for service providers and vendors.

Motorola, however, says the transfers were in the works before Google acquired the smartphone maker, which declined to disclose the number of engineers impacted.

When Google snapped up Motorola in May as part of a $12.4 billion deal, industry watchers thought the company primarily was interested in Motorola’s patent portfolio — not its hardware lines. Many people predicted massive layoffs.

If Google sells Motorola’s cable assets, it will divest itself of a division that produces cable modems, set-tops, video processors, navigation software and more. A CNET report, however, argues that selling the cable assets would be a big mistake, since they would give Google an inroad into the living room for its struggling Google TV.